Meet talented photographer and LCC Graduate, Francesca Jane Allen

One look at Francesca’s portfolio and we knew that this was a very, very exciting graduate. Channeling all the vibes of Rookie with the serene portraiture ability of Vermeer, Francesca’s lucid, candid photography depicts youth, friendship and true love. With a BA in Photography from the London College of Communication and a few cross-continental adventures under her belt, Francesca’s well on her way to becoming a much-loved photographer. We chatted to her about her time at University and her plans for the future.

Why or who or what made you go to art school?

This is a question I ask myself far too many times a day. I was always better at academic subjects like maths and science and studying art infuriated me. It still does, but I ended up here somehow. I left school early so I didn’t actually have the right qualifications to apply for a more academic degree and it seemed appropriate to dedicate three years to doing what I love.

Tell us about your best project

I think my final project was my best project. I spent my entire degree trying to conceptualise my work and add a deeper meaning to it when in reality it had been staring at me the whole time. The series entitled Girls! Girls! Girls! was a series of images I’ve been working on since I was 17. As the title might suggest, the images are all of girls, mainly my younger sister and my best friends Cosima and Ayesha. All of the girls I photographed mean a lot to me and have shaped my life in some way or another. There are over 60 pictures in the project and I displayed them in a huge collage on the wall. It felt very final and extravagant to show all of my favourite work in one go and I still feel sad about having to take it down. I’m actually releasing a zine with a selection of images from the show very soon, so I guess it’s not entirely over.

Tell us about your worst

I’ve done some god-awful projects for school. I haven’t exactly been an exemplary student and the majority of the work I presented was crammed in a sketchbook the night before with a terrible concept behind them in a halfhearted attempt to conform to the brief. Perhaps a low point was creating a series imitating Frida Kahlo portraits in photographic pastiche using male subjects and questionable collage skills.

If you could show one person your portfolio, who would it be and why?

Maybe my Dad; I don’t know if he’s ever seen it. It would be a total middle finger to show him I am making some fab things!

Francesca Jane Allen: Girls! Girls! Girls!

What was the best moment of your three years at uni (extra curricular included)?

Last summer I spent two months traveling in Mexico and California photographing and filming almost everything and everyone I encountered. The images I took there are some of my favourite images and they reflect the incredible experience I had and the wonderful people I met along the way. I formed some very special relationships with people and a lot of these photos made an appearance in my final show.

A lot is changing – would you recommend art school to someone who is considering going?

Yes, but I wouldn’t recommend studying your current practice – study something that can be applied to your practice. I wish I had studied book-arts or a design related course, learned totally new skills and used my photography within that. If you love something, you don’t need to go to school to study it, just do it for yourself. Art school could be the best thing that happened to you, or the worst. It isn’t for everyone and there are always other options.

Finally, if your dreams come true, where will you be in a year’s time?

Not waitressing! A year feels like such a short period of time now so I don’t have any crazy expectations. Eventually I want to live in California – I lived there when I was younger and it’s so beautiful. I want to make my work out there. It’s vast and sleepy and barren and everything I want to see on a daily basis.

Francesca Jane Allen: Girls! Girls! Girls!

Francesca Jane Allen: Girls! Girls! Girls!

Francesca Jane Allen: Rebecca

Francesca Jane Allen: Girls! Girls! Girls!

Francesca Jane Allen: Diary

Francesca Jane Allen: Girls! Girls! Girls!

Supported by Represent

We are very pleased that The It’s Nice That Graduates 2014 will once again be supported by Represent Recruitment. The graphic design recruitment specialists have developed a peerless reputation working with designers of all levels and matching them up with the right positions in some of the top agencies around. Represent’s support has helped us grow the Graduate scheme over recent years and we are thrilled they have partnered with us again in 2014.www.represent.uk.com

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It was something of an honour to have illustrator Jean Jullien in the studio to help judge this year’s It’s Nice That Graduates. Not only is he a really nice guy, but he’s also one of our favourite artists who – in our eyes – can do no wrong. His style is effortless and full of humour, grinning at our modern world through a wry squint – an ability that most of the great illustrators through time have nearly all had in common. Another thing we can all learn from Jean is that he works harder than most people we know and rarely says no to a project, making him in-demand and always on everyone’s radar. Here he is on what he learnt from helping us judge the It’s Nice That Graduates 2014.

Graphic designer and Manchester School of Art student Michael Crook is the 15th and final of our Graduates of 2014, securing a spot up there with the best of ’em with his incredibly sharp and effortless-looking design. The projects he won us over with include an identity for an event called The Science of Fashion in which he used thermochronic ink to create a disappearing design, a book about American hobo culture and the secret written languages nomads use to communicate with one another, and an original take on book cover design, in which he made Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 look like a book of matches ready for the striking. Read on to find out about his favourite project to date, and the perfume-soaked tab he’s hoping never to encounter again. Well done Michael!
h3. Why or who or what made you go to art school?

Our penultimate It’s Nice That Graduate of 2014 is Falmouth Illustration grad Lauren Humphrey, whose style is fun and playful and brilliantly authentic without sacrificing her message. It’s not often that you find a creative fresh out of university who so effortlessly aligns meaning with a recognisable and accessible aesthetic, but Lauren does so effortlessly, combining a style she has firmly established with the brief she’s set. She’s one to watch out for! Find her in a swanky studio, or potentially restoring an old boat, before you even know what’s happening.

University of Brighton graduate Charlotte Bassett’s work is so carefully considered that if you saw it in an art gallery or publishing house, nobody would blink an eyelid. There’s nothing rash or impulsive about her design, which focusses primarily on “curation, interdisciplinary collaborations and publishing”; instead, she combines diverse elements and a thorough knowledge of her subjects in a measured, sensitive and effective manner to create lasting impact.

We’ve almost finished our selection of It’s Nice That Graduates 2014, and we’ve well and truly established that this year has produced some of the most talented and exciting creative talent to date. We had a selection of handpicked judges to help us select the entrants who most deserved to make it through to the final 15, and in corner of publishing are Lydia and Lucy from Accent Magazine, “a global celebration of lives lived outside the ordinary.” They kindly left us with a few nuggets of wisdom for new graduates to show what they were looking for.

Going through nearly 600 applicants for the It’s Nice That Graduates was a long process, and in it we saw countless photography submissions. To come across a portfolio like Portsmouth graduate Alecsandra’s was truly special, as her website was utterly brimming with fascinating, in-depth projects that stood out as being truly well-researched, full of passion and rather unique. Her love of storytelling led her to focus on politics, family, tradition and emotion, making her body of work alive with folklore and wisdom. How great is it when someone’s work truly opens your eyes to something you had previously never encountered? Here she is on her degree, her passion for photography, and her future.

Realist methods in painting often strive for a photographic quality, leaving the viewer amazed and disconcerted by the uncanny closeness to reality. In the photography of Ruud van Empel, however, this trope is inverted. Rather than creating photo-realism within painting, Ruud constructs a kind of photo-artificialism with his photographs that verge on the painterly. In other words, where you might look at a painting by Chuck Close and mistake it for a photograph, you’re likely to take Ruud’s photographs for paintings.

Fashion photography with a pinch of the documentary; photographer Grant James-Thomas stumbled into the hybrid genre of travel fashion photography as a 17-year-old. Growing up on a farm in Wales, he found himself (just a few short years later) shooting for Vogue. Since then he’s travelled the world, photographing editorials in locations ranging from Kenya and Vietnam to Costa Rica, eventually settling in London but continuing to experiment with all kinds of photographic styles and subjects.

Stiya by Cole Barash is a high stylised sequence of images, recently released as a photo book at LA Art Bookfair, published by Deadbeat Club. A dual series, it tells the story of two events – a storm and the birth of his first child – both which lasted for four days. It’s a book which utilises Cole’s idiosyncratic “hyper-focused” method of photography to closely examine the similarities between the two events, comparing them as spaces exclusive to the elements and ubiquitous with change, seclusion and energy.

We all feel lonely from time to time. For some of us, the working hours are the loneliest time of the day especially for some freelancers spending hour after hour tucked away in a studio grafting away at a commission. For the Seoul-based illustrator known as Nano, these emotions are worth portraying, beautifully expressing loneliness in new series of illustrations she’s titled The Lonely People.

Over in Oslo, Norway, Jan Hakon Erichsen has been establishing what can only be described as a very unique artistic practice. Describing himself as a “visual artist and balloon destroyer,” Jan’s work also comes with a disclaimer: “You should really, really not try this at home.”

Having studied at Korean design college Paju Typography Institute, and with a further degree in visual communication from Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel, Seoul-based graphic designer Son Ayong has a pretty good idea of how to capture and convey concepts by paying close attention to form, line and colour in text and image. Her bold poster designs draw on elements of illustration and web-based graphic works to create visual identities that reflect the overarching themes running through exhibitions, programmes, films, festivals, workshops and seminars.

Korean American graphic designer HeeJae Kim’s portfolio is one full of colour and personality. While some familiar elements do appear across his designs, HeeJae’s work is always underpinned by an attitude towards graphic design that sees typographic elements handled in an illustrative manner, a fact that’s inspired by his initial studies in illustration.

Whether or not to study a postgraduate degree in the arts is a question pretty much every undergraduate will ask themselves. But it is a pertinent question particularly within the arts, as the option to spend a few more years developing as a creative is tempting.

A self-confessed “egoist photographer who’s obsessed by his personal aesthetic research”, Leonardo Scotti first began taking pictures as part of the subway graffiti scene in Milan and wider Europe, pursuing personal projects and self-publishing them in the form of photo-zines. Over the past few years, as he’s begun to integrate the ways he approaches commissions and personal work, his practice has evolved to incorporate fashion photography. He tells us: “I found the balance between work and my personal imagery”, which has resulted in fashion shoots that pay close attention to artistic composition, as well as personal work which draws on elements of fashion styling.

Raid is a new publication by Irish graphic designer and developer Simon Sweeney. Currently based in Munich though “leaving for somewhere else in July” (very mysterious), Raid is a unique magazine as it stemmed from the never-ending stream of potential ideas that is a Slack channel. Featuring a host of exciting designers, Raid asks its contributors to imagine a game, and then design its logo.

As a young man, Kazuhiro Aihara dreamt of being a professional snowboarder and was well on his way to making that dream a reality, when all of a sudden it didn’t materialise for a number of reasons. “I felt absolutely defeated in my life,” the Tokyo-based graphic designer tells It’s Nice That. “Around that time, I realised I loved creating graphic designs and, along with snowboarding, I started designing a few different things for fashion and music flyers.”

“Looking back now, I guess my decision to get into graphic design has a lot to do with the fact that I was obsessed with MTV, music magazines, CD artworks, etc as a teenager,” says Felipe Rocha, a Brazilian designer and art director based in New York City. “My dream was to be closer to this ‘world’, and to me, design was the way to get there.”

One of our Ones to Watch 2018, illustrator Jeffrey Cheung has delighted us once again with a new publication of paintings and drawings. The book features his signature energetic nude figures, set forth in vibrant colours, with a touching innocence and simplicity of style. He says of his art: “Over the past few years, my practice has shifted from zines to painting canvas, and decks for queer and trans skateboarders. My practice is fluctuating and has become more involved with creating community space and how my visual art can be used to uplift others.”

“Anderson shelters, used condoms, buried Victorian tannic acid bottles, discarded ring-pull cans, tarmac, railway engineers in high-viz jackets, men in tracksuits, men in dinner suits.” These are just a few of the things that Daniel Soars considers “the essential signs of England,” in a recent piece on Max Porter’s recently-published novel Lanny. These are the signs that pop up throughout Lanny like old Barbara Cartland paperbacks at a Sunday morning car-boot sale. Soars could also be describing the images and atmospheres compiled in photographer Ian Howorth’s latest collection.

Nepalese photographer Uma Bista dedicates her work to addressing issues of gender inequality in South Asia, and raising awareness about the difficulties that women face in their daily lives under the systemic enforcement of patriarchal values and traditions. Having graduated from the International Photography Programme run by Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she now works in Kathmandu as a deputy photo editor at Annapurna Post, a Nepalese daily newspaper.

Tess Smith-Roberts is an illustrator in her final year at Kingston School of Art. Originally from Norwich, she uses bright, bold colour and simple compositions to tells stories, her characters never complete without two black dots for eyes, and a straight line for lips.

“All my typefaces have feminist concepts or thoughts woven into them," says the type and graphic designer Charlotte Rohde. Based out of Amsterdam but having studied in Düsseldorf where the typography is usually very bold – “almost brutal but playful at the same time” – Charlotte’s designs visibly encapsulate the place where she studied while hinting at feminism which adds an emotional value to the text.

Haeri Chung, otherwise known as Super Salad (fantastic name, we know) is a Seoul-based graphic designer mainly working in print. She also founded an independent publishers called Super Salad Stuff which is where her nickname comes from, and where she compiles all her self-initiated projects as a way to keep them alive and healthy. Contributing these self-published publications to art and books fairs every year, she also distributes free papers on a wide range of topics from the subject of how to tie different knots, to documenting the inherent design applied to air mail.

Even if you have attended any kind of sports game in the Massachusetts area recently, chances are you probably haven’t spotted the photographer Pelle Cass. His images, on the other hand, would be pretty difficult to overlook.

Caricom is the magazine using football’s ability to encourage a sense of community among fans of differing backgrounds to tackle subjects absent from mainstream sports media. In particular, it recognises the need to see “football and fan culture examined through the under-explored lens of the black experience in Great Britain and beyond”. Founded by writer Calum Jacobs and Shawn Sawyers, Caricom is now in its second issue; a more refined, more diverse and even more celebratory issue.

“Imagine a time where nature and civilisation are engaged in the ultimate power struggle… Who will reign supreme? Who will achieve destruction on a level never imagined?” So speaks the narrator in the script for a virtual reality game interrogating the threat and fear of climate change, dreamt up by California-based visual artist Veronica Graham. In her new Risograph-printed publication, NAT vs CIV, self-published under the moniker Most Ancient, Veronica creates a series of storyboards that envision how the game will play out in its digitised form.

When Jieun Lee and a group of her friends traveled to Australia last year, the Suwon-based illustrator took the opportunity to paint the “good and warm” urban landscapes she vividly remembers. “These are the places where I fell in love with traveling," she tells It’s Nice That. Photographing a bank imagery that signify these feelings, Jieun then started painting from these photographs once she was back in Korea, adding a dash of Hockney’s colour palette to the charming paintings.

China’s biggest city, Shanghai, located on the country’s central coast and most well known for its global buzz in the finance world, is now also tackling the wonderful world of independent publishing through the Shanghai Art Book Fair.

Welcome to the first in a new series we’re launching here at It’s Nice That. Called Double Click, each month it will bring you a round-up of some of our favourite websites and digital designs floating around out there on the world wide web. Whether they employ lateral thinking to show us a new way of navigating a site, use animation to enhance the reading experience, or feature some downright bonkers interactions, we’ll be chatting to the creators of each site to find out more about the thinking that went into the design.

It’s not every day that a successful global fashion brand allows itself and its message to be interpreted by someone from outside the company. But that’s exactly what Paul Smith has done with a wonderfully weird new book, created by James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks, otherwise known as Rottingdean Bazaar.

The last time we wrote about illustrator and animator Dylan Jones, we were fascinated by the mysterious figure calling himself Hologram Ceiling and producing fantastically absurd, squiggly drawings on coloured paper in bright pastels and pencil. Since then, Dylan has produced three mini publications with Gridlords, as well as continuing to create his signature bizarre, hallucinatory illustrations, which take our weirdest fantasies and reflect them back at us in a funhouse mirror.

Photographer Dustin Thierry, born on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, is now based in Amsterdam where he uses his camera to bolster communities he is both a part of, and feels a responsibility towards. Working on long-term projects, his images are sensitive and full of joy, not to mention beautiful, and tackle themes surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and vulnerable minorities.

Part magazine, part photo book, Bill is an annual photography publication by Roma which describes its initiative as “prioritising visual reading without distraction”. With editing and creative direction by graphic designer Julie Peeters, Bill collates new or unpublished work from 12 contributing photographers and presents the images with no accompanying text, upholding the capacity of pictures to speak for themselves.

Welcome to the first of our brand new series, In Conversation, a new fortnightly interview with a leading light from the world of creativity. Every other Monday, we’ll publish a new Q&A here on It’s Nice That. Today, for the first instalment, we chat to Los Angeles-based German artist Thomas Demand.

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